58readytotravel

These following pictures are of the last couple of days that we were in Yellowstone N.P. This first one is of a female Elk that was laying just outside one of the visitor centers. I couldn't get my camera out fast enough before it settled down in the grass. It was so hot that day. Into the 90's again.

The photos below are from the Mud Volcano area of the park. Boiling mud about sums it up.

This particular mud pot was boiling about 2 or 3 feet high.

Churning Caldron.....

This one was called Dragon's Mouth. The steam would bounce off of the walls of the cave there and when it escaped it sounded like a dragon's roar.

We pulled off at Calcite Springs and Falls. The first photo is of the springs and the second one is of the falls.

As we were driving, we spotted this fox on the hunt. He was leaping through the field and then crawling. Not sure what he was after.

Then came another photo moment with these Sandhill Cranes along the road pecking at the ground. Had to take it from a distance, so they are hard to make out.

This area was on the road up to Mammoth Hot Springs. There were huge bolders on each side of the road. Mark took a turn off and it was all bolders all around. I didn't think that we were going to fit through the road, but we did.

Here's a photo of Mark and I that a fellow took for us along the river.

This is Tower Falls. This turn off was really crowded. We didn't know why this area would be so packed with people, but maybe they were all on the way up to Roosevelt for the Cookout. There was a nice Yellowstone General Store there. We had to take a peek to see what was new in this one from the others.

After Tower Falls, we headed out north to Mammoth Hot Springs. This was a very busy area with traffic jams and people all over the little town. There were army barricks, several gift shops, hotels and a museum with several stuffed animals that were native to yellowstone. It was nice to be able to see just how large they really were instead of just a picture on a card to try to identify them when we saw them in Yellowstone in the wild. This below is a view from the road of Mammoth Hot Springs.

We continued to travel north and out the North Entrance of the park. This is the ranger station at the North Yellowstone Park entrance. We passed through four of the five entrances and just missed the NE entrance by a few miles of passing through it as well when we visited Lamar Valley. We traveled almost every mile of the available road in the park during our stay there.

Below is the Roosevelt Arch located at the North Entrance to the park, just outside of Gardiner. It was dedicated to Pres. Roosevelt. There is also a town named Roosevelt to the south of this arch.

We went into the town of Gardiner and bought a few groceries. The diesel was 25 cents a gallon cheaper here than it was in the park, so we filled up. Many tourist shops there. We didn't venture into any of the shops there. It was getting late and we had a long drive home.

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On our last full day in the park, we packed a picnic lunch and our lawn chairs and headed out to Lamar Valley. We had been told that this was the area to go to view wildlife. It certainly was beautiful out there. We stopped just before the valley to have our lunch in a picnic area. There were a lot of people there that morning, but we did manage to find a table. As we were sitting there eating our sandwiches, a butterfly kept landing on us. Just wouldn't leave us alone. It was like he wanted us to take him with us. I should have taken a picture of him. It was sort of odd how he kept landing on our clothes and on the cooler. Maybe he was drawn to the orange color of the cooler.

Here's a shot of a huge herd of Bison in Lamar Valley. They just look like little dots here, but those are Bison.

Here's one of those bison up on a hill posing for his picture. They are so enormous!

A storm was starting to roll in, so I took this photo across the valley. It was just an amazing place. You just can't explain how vast the area is with just you and the wildlife there to enjoy.

We pulled off on the roadside and set up the spotting scope here. There was a river running through the valley and a herd of bison off to the west. Several red tail hawks were soaring all around the area. Mark walked down near to the river and saw a fox den. It was a rather large hole in the ground with fresh dirt piled up all around it.

We picked up our chairs, spotting scope and other items and we were headed back to camp when we spotted these prong horn antelopes along the road side enjoying a drink. I snapped a couple of pictures.